Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle |
November 15, 2008

The hardest part about building security into a bureaucracy is being sure it's not harming other types of security along the way.

A proposal to set up statewide driver's license checkpoints plainly fails the test. Fortunately, even its proponents have backed off.

Last August, the Department of Public Safety authorized a rule that, on the face of it, fell within its job description. The rule requires applicants for a driver's license to prove they're legally in the U.S. before getting a Texas driver's license or ID.

But lawmakers, including state Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon, D-San Antonio, only learned of the rule when it went into effect this October. What McClendon heard concerned her: Among other things, the rule denied driver's licenses to anyone in Texas for less than six months. A legal immigrant from Germany, recently arrived here with her husband for a new job, might fall into that category.

When she researched the rule, McClendon found something even more disconcerting. The DPS had also asked the state Attorney General's office if it could legally issue a rule establishing checkpoints throughout the state.

Taken together, the two proposals from DPS seemed aimed at snaring undocumented immigrants through unprompted highway searches.

According to McClendon, these goals amount to making immigration policy — policy that, according to Texas courts, should be decided, with public input, by elected officials such as the Legislature.

As for the legality of the checkpoints themselves, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that random traffic stops singling out particular drivers to check licenses — without suspicion of cause — violate the Constitution.

But the ruling did allow states to conduct broader checks that "involve less intrusion," such as "questioning of all oncoming traffic at roadblock-type stops."

But even if it's procedurally and constitutionally allowed, a checkpoint network this far from the border is still bad policy. Above all, because its motives are murky, it is impossible to evaluate its success.

Is it really meant to catch infractions such as expired driver's licenses? With so many other dangers out there, it would be absurd to launch wholesale dragnets of innocent commuters just to catch random exchange students who overstay their visas.

A more likely motive, as even some of the rule's supporters suggest, would be catching, removing and warning away some of the state's hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants. This, as McClendon has pointed out, would definitely count as an immigration policy.

Understandably, many Texans are frustrated by Congress' failure to enact workable immigration reform. But this new type of enforcement is not the answer. The more constructive response to such frustration is to pressure federal lawmakers to build and pass a sound immigration policy — one that includes visas for unskilled workers as well as better border security.

On Friday the Texas Public Safety Commission bowed to lawmaker opposition and withdrew its request for the attorney general's opinion. Hopefully, the agency has learned its lesson about trying to usurp the Legislature's role in setting sensitive public policy.